Hate Inc.

3.7 Stars

Let me say first that I think this is an important book and one that anyone with even a passing interest in the functioning of our society should read (American or not, Right or Left, etc.)

Taibbi does a decent job at calling out the press in regard to their recent bias. It's very enlightening to hear him describe the collusion between the ruling elites and the media. He goes back a little bit and discusses how this operated after the 9/11 attacks and then more or less jumps forward to Trump's election, which was enough of a shock to his system that it forced him to recognize the cognitive dissonance going on in his industry.

The issue I have is that Taibbi treats this as though the “choosing of sides” happened in 2016 and he doesn't do enough to call out the roots of activism in the reporting corps and media in general. He also goes out of his way to continue to belittle roughly half of the country (conservatives) as being unthinking and uneducated. He also seems to make assumptions about the entirety of the left being highly educated and essentially that “they ought to know better.” Which is ridiculous. There are tons of people who are uneducated on both sides of the spectrum. And that includes anybody who buys their party's line whole-sale without scrutiny.

While he mentions the media having “chosen sides”, he still lambasts Fox News for being stupid and adding to the dysfunction. But he doesn't address the fact that there is ZERO mainstream neutral reporting of the news OR any right-LEANING mainstream outlets. Never mentions it once. It's as if in a country where 70 million people voted red and 72 million people voted blue (and 1-2 million people voted non-big 2 parties, like me) that it is somehow reasonable that conservative leaners have a SINGLE mainstream outlet (that is quite propagandous) whereas CNN, MSNBC, HLNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, WaPo are all pretty far-left propaganda outlets. If you think NBC, CBS, ABC are “center” you have been Overton Windowed hard. And I'm not even right-leaning. It's just obvious when you watch any of them. That all of those are somehow “balanced” by Fox News is a serious false equivalence. And any thinking conservative or independent knows full well what they are getting with Fox and by and large they are not satisfied with it. There simply isn't another option because it's so obvious that the other side is propaganda as well. I personally think this is a huge reason so many people just ignore the news entirely. Better to be ignorant than misinformed. The BS-detectors go off 100% of the time no matter what mainstream outlet you care to turn on.

Which also accomplishes this (which isn't mentioned in the book): If you are conservative and watch Fox News, you are STILL going to be exposed extensively to the leftward bias of the media because they are ubiquitous. On the other hand, if you are left-leaning or a centrist, you have to go way out of your way and risk being excommunicated by watching Fox News (if you can stand it) to be exposed to ANY conservative viewpoint. That has been the case for 20 years now at least.

In other words, it is not only easy for a liberal-minded individual to get viewpoint bubbled, it is almost impossible for them NOT to be that way. They are not going out of their way to listen to conservative radio or even watch FOX. They're getting all of their opinions about what conservatives think from far-left media liberals. Who are consistent in calling every conservative a Homophobic, Fascist, Bigoted Nazi. Literally. There is an “othering” of conservatives going on in the West that is honestly very scary right now and is likely to end poorly for everyone involved.

While this book doesn't cover these important details, it does at least dip the toe into the water. I like Taibbi and have been following his writing for years now on Substack. It's ironic that the left is attacking that outlet because they can't stand any level-headed thinker having a platform. They only allow one to be sanctioned: Fox News. And all who ever watch it are WrongThinkers and deserve what they get.

Of note, in the appendix he has an interview of Noam Chomski who mentions the Trilateral Commission and their comments indicating they want to “limit democracy.” Again, THIS is the actual root of almost all of this. The media is essentially the PR arm of the TLC, WEF and all the technocrats. What they want for you, more likely than not, isn't what you would consider consistent with “democracy” or a “republic” or “liberty” or “freedom” in America.